Massimo Calabresi

Massimo Calabresi

Massimo Calabresi joined the Washington bureau of TIME in 1999 and has covered the CIA, State, Justice, Treasury, Congress and the White House. He covered the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo as TIME's Central Europe bureau chief from 1995 to 1999 and the collapse of the Soviet Union as a freelancer in Moscow in 1991.

The Legal Question Over Hillary Clinton’s Secret Emails

The Washington Post—The Washington Post/Getty ImagesSecretary Hillary Clinton speaks to voters at a town hall meeting in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, July 28, 2015.

Two key questions: Did she know material was classified and did she act negligently handling it?

Is Hillary Clinton in trouble for having government secrets on her private email server?

Last week, the inspector general for the U.S. intelligence community concluded that some of the emails Clinton and others exchanged on her private server while she was Secretary of State contained classified information.

But the consequences of that revelation were muddied early on by erroneous reports of a request for a criminal inquiry from the Justice Department and by official disagreement over when and whether the information in the emails was actually classified.

Legally, the question is pretty clear-cut. If Clinton knowingly used her private server to handle classified information she could have a problem. But if she didn’t know the material was classified when she sent or received it she’s safe.

There are severallaws that make it a criminal offense knowingly to reveal or mishandle classified information. The main one, 18 USC 1924 reads:

Whoever being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.

Clinton has explicitly and repeatedly said she didn’t knowingly send or receive any classified information. “The facts are pretty clear,” she said last weekend in Iowa, “I did not send nor receive anything that was classified at the time.” Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III, disagrees, saying some of the material was in fact classified at the time it was sent. But in his letter last week to Congressional intelligence committee leaders, McCullough reported that, “None of the emails we reviewed had classification or dissemination markings.” And there has been no indication Clinton knew she was sending and receiving anything classified.

The public doesn’t yet know the content of the classified emails, and the State Department and the inspectors general have tens of thousands still to review. If evidence emerges that Clinton knew she was handling secrets on her private server, “She could have a problem,” says William Jeffress, a leading criminal trial lawyer at Baker Botts who has represented government officials in secrecy cases. Barring that, says Jeffress, “there’s no way in the world [prosecutors] could ever make a case” against her.

Clinton also has to worry about government rules for handling secrets. In December 2009, President Obama signed Executive Order 13526, which renewed the long-running rules for classifying information and the penalties for revealing it.

Under that order, agency heads like Clinton are responsible for keeping secrets safe throughout their departments. And all officers of the government can be suspended, fired or have their security clearance revoked if they “knowingly, willfully, or negligently” disclosed secrets or broke the rules in any other way.

Was Clinton negligent in setting up her private email server and communicating with State Department staff exclusively on it? Says Steven Aftergood, a secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists, “The material in question was not marked as classified, making it very hard or impossible to show negligence.”

With 16 months until the 2016 presidential election, Clinton’s opponents will certainly try. And with tens of thousands of emails still to be reviewed, they’ll have plenty of material to work with.

Iran Trades Nuclear Standoff for Regional Power

Analyzing the controversial deal

As Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, sat in Room 103 of the Palais Coburg Hotel in Vienna just before midnight on July 13, 20 months of negotiations hung on a set of issues that had nothing to do with nuclear weapons. …

Greek Debt Crises Haunted by Balkan History

Yves Herman—ReutersGerman Chancellor Angela Merkel, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, French President Francois Hollande and European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker take part in a euro zone EU leaders emergency summit on the situation in Greece in Brussels, on July 7, 2015.

Things can always get worse, and few places prove it like the Balkans. Twenty years ago this week, President Bill Clinton’s national security team was struggling to come up with a plan to save or replace the failing three-year-old United Nations “peacekeeping” mission in Bosnia. On July 6, 1995, Serb forces overran the UN-protected “safe-haven” of Srebrenica and slaughtered more than 8,000 men and boys in the worst European massacre since World War II. Even now, some 1,200 people remain missing in the scattered mass graves of eastern Bosnia.

Today’s Balkan crisis in Greece is not nearly so acute. A last ditch effort to avoid chaos is afoot as European creditors and the self-described radicals now ruling in Athens race towards a Sunday deadline for a deal to avoid economic collapse. A deal looks increasingly likely, but with some on the right still looking to teach Greece a fiscal lesson and others on the left urging Athens to rebel against its creditors, it is worth remembering there is plenty of room for more pain.

Banks remain closed and runs on products that can retain value have begun. If there is no deal by Sunday and Greece is forced to drop the Euro to pay its international and domestic bills, food and medicine shortages and fast-rising inflation are likely. In that event, says former U.S. Ambassador to Athens, Charles Ries, “You’ll see further hardship in the middle and lower classes, incomes will be worth less and household income will go down.” With little credibility left for the Greek government on the world markets, printing money may be the only way to fund public payments and rapidly rising inflation could further impoverish the country.

Where economic collapse leads the way, political unrest sometimes follows, and scared Greeks rightly worry that social order and stability are in danger. Greece, for all its historical claims as the font of western democracy has a more checkered recent political past. A civil war between the Greek government and communists backed by Yugoslavia and Albania followed World War II, and a right wing military coup took power from 1967 to 1974, relinquishing control only after the debacle of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. A radical left-wing terrorist group, November 17, attempted for years to violently overthrow successive democratically elected governments.

To be sure, Greeks have a strong national identity and sense of their own history, and view their country as integrally tied to Europe. Both Ries and another former U.S. ambassador, Nicholas Burns, see prospects for a deal to avoid a Greek exit from the Euro increasing, and both think political collapse is unlikely. But the recent referendum over whether to accept a European bailout showed “a country very badly divided,” says Burns. “I don’t think the state will break over this,” he says, but Greeks “do have a tradition of demonstrations and angry political discourse” that “could really roil the politics.”

Crucial to stability in the event of a worsening economic crisis are the leaders of the far-left alliance, Syriza, and that is the primary cause for worry, says Burns. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has “driven the country into a ditch,” but is taking no responsibility for his actions, says Burns. Syriza’s leadership, “Strike me as highly ideological [and] quite inexperienced,” says Burns, “And I just worry that they haven’t shown the kind of sophisticated, calm leadership that you’d want in a real national crisis.”

Some observers in Greece see signs of the fraying of liberal political consensus in the current disarray. Prosecutors in Athens have launched an investigation into coverage of the recent referendum by local media, and statements by Syriza leaders, including the Interior Minister Nikos Voutsis, have further fanned concerns. Nor do the nationalist sympathies driving much of the outrage against austerity necessarily fall naturally on the side of pluralist democracy: right wing political groups, including followers of “Golden Dawn,” have been arrested for violent attacks on members of the political left in recent years.

With the possibility of economic collapse imminent, it seems Syriza’s leaders and Greece’s international creditors may be able to reach a deal. It is certainly the most reasonable course of action. But as the world pauses to remember the dead at Srebrenica, it is worth remembering that especially in the Balkans, many have died assuming that things couldn’t get any worse.

Here’s the Trickiest Part of the Iranian Nuclear Talks

Thomas Imo/photothek.netForeign Minister of France Laurent Fabius (R) talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during the nuclear talks between the E3+3 (France, Germany, UK, China, Russia, US) and Iran in Vienna, Austria on July 06, 2015.

After more than 18 months of talks, the U.S. and Iran are within striking distance of a nuclear deal. But diplomats familiar with the talks say the hardest issue negotiators have struggled with from the start remains unresolved: the nature and extent of international inspections to monitor the supposedly peaceful nuclear program Iran gets to keep under the agreement. Which means the final push for a deal is probably the most important.

The heart of the interim “political framework” that the U.S. and Iran agreed to on April 2 was a step-by-step-lifting of economic sanctions on Tehran in exchange for its commitment to allow international monitors to verify tough limits on its nuclear program. But the outline left unresolved just how much access the monitors would get and what would happen if there were a disagreement. “The interim deal was largely silent on verification conditions,” says David Albright, a former arms inspector and the president of Institute for Science and International Security.

What kind of access the IAEA gets makes all the difference in part because Iran has a history of cheating on nuclear deals. A signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it committed to monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But twice in the past twenty years it secretly built nuclear facilities that were only uncovered by aggressive intelligence work by the U.S., France, the United Kingdom and Israel. And Iran has never explained the research into nuclear weapons that the international community uncovered over that time.

Since the April deal, Iran has sent mixed messages on how much access inspectors would get to suspected nuclear sites around the country. On May 20, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ruled out inspections of military facilities. But Iranian officials suggested to reporters last week in Vienna that the country would accept additional, intrusive inspections proposed by the IAEA. Getting those additional measures is key to U.S. and Western confidence in a deal. “The IAEA has to get better cooperation from Iran,” says Albright.

Even if Iran agrees on paper to the additional IAEA inspections, though, skeptics worry that in practice Tehran will block monitors. The U.S. negotiators have pushed for a system to resolve disputes quickly so that Iran couldn’t hide evidence at a suspect site before inspectors got there. How that system would work and whether Iran will agree to it are still unknown.

The final question is what happens if the IAEA and international powers actually catch Iran breaking the agreement. The U.S. has insisted that sanctions must be reimposed automatically if the IAEA finds violations Iran can’t or won’t explain them. While details are thin, sources familiar with the talks say both sides have made progress on that issue in recent days.

Ultimately a nuclear deal with Iran is only as strong as the inspections that verify its implementation. The question now is whether Iran will actually accept intrusive monitoring and if not, will U.S. negotiators have the fortitude to walk away after a year and a half of talks have brought them so close to a deal.

As officials in Indiana scramble to contain a fast-spreading HIV outbreak, TIME has learned that government officials warned one company that the newest version of a drug it manufactured could be driving behavior that is contributing to the crisis.

The HIV outbreak in southern Indiana, which has ballooned from 8 cases in January to 166 as of June, is the result of addicts dissolving and injecting Opana, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local officials in Scott County, where the outbreak is centered. 96% of those who tested positive for HIV and were interviewed by the CDC said they were injecting Opana, according to an April health alert by the agency.

In 2012, Endo introduced a new version of the drug that it said was designed to be abuse deterrent. Where a previous version of the drug could be easily crushed and snorted or dissolved and injected, the new version had a special coating that supposedly made doing so more difficult. Endo removed the previous version from the market and asked the FDA to rule that it had been unsafe. Such a ruling would have prevented other drug makers from introducing generic versions of the pill.

The FDA denied Endo’s request, rejecting the company’s claims about the new coating’s ability to deter abuse. While the new formulation made it harder to crush and snort the drug, the FDA found, “it may be easier to prepare OPR for injection.” That raised, the FDA said, “the troubling possibility that the reformulation may be shifting a non-trivial amount of Opana ER abuse from snorting to even more dangerous abuse by intravenous or subcutaneous injection.”

Officials in Scott County say abusers discovered they could cook down the abuse deterrent version of the pill, dissolving it and preparing it for injection. Officials say addicts prefer the drug to heroin, even though it is more expensive, and the high doesn’t last as long. Addicts in Scott County have transmitted HIV to each other by sharing needles as they shoot up, sometimes as often as 20 times a day.

Endo, a Pennsylvania-based company that specializes in pain medications, earned $1.16 billion in revenue from Opana from 2008-2012. The company has denied Opana is at the heart of the outbreak and has suggested generic versions of its drug that didn’t have the “abuse deterrent” coating might be at fault, as discussed in the current cover story of TIME on opioid abuse in America:

In April, Endo held a conference call with public-health officials in Scott County. The Endo officials “thought it was a mistake,” says [Scott County public health nurse, Brittany] Combs, who was on the call. Around the same time, [Scott County Sheriff Dan] McClain says an Endo security official called him and offered to help investigate the source of the pills. The Endo official told him the drug being abused couldn’t be Opana because it had been reformulated to be “abuse deterrent.” McClain was skeptical. “I’ve got an evidence room full of Opana over there right now, and I don’t have any generic forms of that pill that are being purchased off the street,” McClain says.

Endo officials declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article. In response to questions emailed to the company regarding its marketing of Opana and its response to the crisis in Scott County, Keri Mattox, senior vice president for investor relations, said, “Patient safety is a top priority for Endo,” and the company has “an ongoing, active and productive dialogue” with the FDA regarding Opana’s “technology designed to deter abuse.” Mattox says the company supports “a broad range of programs that provide awareness and education around the appropriate use of pain medications” and has reached out to the CDC, Indiana state officials and Scott County health and law enforcement officials, among others.

The price we pay for relief

On a chilly evening in late March, Dan McClain was getting ready for dinner when his cell phone rang: Indiana Governor Mike Pence wanted to talk.

Over the previous two months a fast-spreading outbreak of HIV had torn through Scott County, a poor, rural pocket 20 miles from the Kentucky border where McClain has been sheriff since 2011. What began as eight new HIV cases in January had ballooned to 81 by March, quickly becoming the worst HIV outbreak in Indiana’s history. Pence, a Republican and stalwart social conservative, wanted to know how to stop it.

McClain, 52, a squared-away former Navy SEAL whose politics tend to align with the governor’s, had an answer, but it wasn’t the one Pence wanted …

President Obama’s trade agenda overcame a setback Wednesday in the Senate, showing a blocked vote 24 hours earlier was more of a negotiating strategy by centrist Democrats than a death-blow to the prospects for a trans-Pacific trade deal.

Given the stakes, that’s not entirely surprising: the single biggest factor in how well most human beings live in 20 years will be the economic balance of power between China and the U.S. Figuring out how best to set that balance to America’s advantage is what the Senate debate is all about.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is being negotiated in secret and few know what is actually in it. But the general purpose is to get 12 countries in Asia and the Americas, which together account for 40% of the world’s production of goods and services, to agree to a broad set of rules for trade and business. Supporters say standardizing those rules would make it easier for Americans to sell things abroad and cheaper to buy things here.

At the same time, China, India and other countries that aren’t part of the TPP talks are trying to cut their own deals to give their companies and consumers an edge. Whoever does it best gets the most benefits, the argument goes.

Opponents of the deal say these so-called “efficient markets” are just jargon for cutting corners on labor, environmental and human rights standards. Competing with China to cut trade deals ends up being a race to the bottom, they say. Instead, they argue that Americans would do better if the Obama Administration set high standards even if that made it harder to compete with other countries.

The problem with that argument is that as China grows ever-more powerful, the world is increasingly happy to ignore high American standards in favor of lower Chinese ones. China’s economy currently produces around $9.24 trillion of goods and services every year; the U.S. weighs in at around $16.7 trillion. Depending on growth rates and inflation, China will likely have the largest economy in the world in a few years and by 2035 it could be way ahead.

That translates into power and influence. Already American allies and enemies alike have shown they will side with China when there is cash at stake. In March, for example, the UK, France, Germany and Italy all defied the U.S. to join a Chinese led development bank.

So how do you set standards and protect American workers while making it easier and cheaper for them to prosper? The centrist bloc of Democrats that stymied Obama yesterday say they want to take a middle path, offering other countries the opportunity to have cheaper trade with the U.S. with somewhat higher standards. The centrists say they’ll vote to pass “fast track” authority if the U.S. also punishes certain kinds of corner-cutting that give countries an unfair advantage in the international markets, such as currency manipulation, lax labor standards and other bad behavior.

Ideologically, that’s not very different from Obama’s position. Which explains why the jubilation on the left after yesterday’s vote was premature. Centrist Democrats reportedly met with the White House to discuss a compromise on tougher standards that would allow “fast track” authority to move ahead. By mid-afternoon Wednesday, a deal had been struck.

Whether that will ultimately keep America competitive with the fast-growing China is another question.

Clinton Allies Knock Down Donor Allegations, New Questions Pop Up

Win McNamee—Getty ImagesHillary Clinton attends the Hillary Rodham Clinton Awards for Advancing Women in Peace and Security at Georgetown University in Washington, DC on April 22, 2015.

Hillary Clinton’s allies are pushing back against the suggestion in a new book that donations to the Clinton Foundation influenced the handling of the sale of U.S. uranium mines to a Russian-backed company.

The new book, Clinton Cash: the Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, says that Hillary Clinton failed in 2010 to block the purchase of American uranium mines by a Russian-backed company while people with financial and strategic interests in the sale were making millions of dollars of donations to the Clinton Foundation, a philanthropy run by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

The suggestion of outside influence over U.S. decisionmaking is based on little evidence — the allegations are presented as questions rather than proof. The deal’s approval was the result of an extensive interagency process that required the assent of at least nine different officials and agencies. A former State Department official who participated in the deal’s approval told TIME that Clinton did not weigh in on the uranium sale one way or the other, and her campaign calls the allegations in the book “absurd conspiracy theories.”

But the book’s dark suggestions reflect the growing problem Clinton faces in her run for the White House in 2016 as more and more details of the foundation’s fundraising activities present the appearance of impropriety and lack of transparency during her time as Secretary of State.

One chapter of the book, written by conservative author Peter Schweizer and obtained by TIME, focuses on an obscure deal that had been years in the making. Schweizer says Secretary Clinton failed to block the Russian State Atomic Nuclear Agency (Rosatom), a Kremlin-controlled nuclear agency, from purchasing a controlling stake in an American Uranium mining concern, Uranium One. The company’s chairman, Ian Telfer, was a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. Several other Clinton Foundation donors stood to gain from the agreement as well.

Because the proposed sale involved the transfer of potentially strategic U.S. assets, the Uranium One transaction was subject to approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an interagency panel that comprises powerful federal agencies. In prior years, Clinton had urged the committee to take a hawkish view of deals involving U.S. strategic assets, and Schweizer says that should have inclined her against the Rosatom purchase. “Despite a long record of publicly opposing such deals Hillary didn’t object,” Schweizer writes in the version of the chapter obtained by TIME. “Why the apparent reversal? Could it be because shareholders involved in the transaction had transferred approximately $145 million to the Clinton Foundation or its initiatives? Or because her husband had profited from lucrative speaking deals arranged by companies associated with those who stood to profit from the deal?”

The State Department’s role in approving the deal was part of an extensive bureaucratic process, and the chapter offers no indication of Hillary Clinton’s personal involvement in, or even knowledge of, the deliberations. State has just one vote on the nine-member committee, which also includes the departments of Defense, Treasury and Energy. Disagreements are traditionally handled at the staff level, and if they are not resolved, they are escalated to deputies at the relevant agencies. If the deputies can’t resolve the dispute, the issues can be elevated to the Cabinet Secretary level and, if needed, to the President for a decision. The official chairman of CFIUS is the Treasury Secretary, not the Secretary of State.

Before purchasing a controlling stake in Uranium One, the Russian conglomerate also had to get approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an independent agency outside of the State Department’s purview, as well as Utah’s nuclear regulator. It also received the sign-off of Canada’s foreign investment review agency. The deal itself was the outgrowth of a diplomatic initiative launched by the Administration of George W. Bush to expand trade opportunities between Russia and the U.S., including in the area of nuclear power.

One official involved in the process said Clinton had nothing to do with the decision in the Uranium One case. Jose Hernandez, who as former Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs was the State Department’s principal representative on the committee, rejected the notion that Clinton’s foundation ties had any bearing on the deal. “Secretary Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter,” he told TIME. A spokesperson for Hillary for America, Josh Schwerin, also attacked the suggestions made in the book. The transaction “went through the usual process and the official responsible for managing CFIUS reviews has stated that the Secretary did not intervene with him,” Schwerin says, “This book is twisting previously known facts into absurd conspiracy theories.”

Throughout the new book, Schweizer suggests that Clinton used her authority as Secretary of State to intervene on behalf of companies that donated to her family’s foundation. Clinton has sought to distance herself from the charges on the campaign trail, calling the GOP claims “distractions.”

Even if Clinton was not involved in approving the deal with the Russian company, the book does raise more questions about the Clinton Foundation’s transparency regarding its donors and shows that the issue will continue to dog her candidacy. The book reports that Telfer, the Uranium One chairman, donated $2.1 million to a Clinton Foundation subsidiary through a charity he controls around the time the purchase was being finalized, an assertion TIME has verified through a review of public records. Those donations do not appear on the foundation’s disclosure of donors. Telfer is listed for smaller donations he made directly to the parent foundation.

In 2008 the Clinton Foundation and President Barack Obama’s transition team signed a memorandum of understanding about the foundation’s activities to allay congressional concerns over potential conflicts of interest stemming from its donors as Clinton was preparing to become Obama’s Secretary of State. “In anticipation of Senator Clinton’s nomination and confirmation as Secretary of State, the foundation will publish its contributors this year,” the agreement states. “During any service by Senator Clinton as Secretary of State, the foundation will publish annually the names of new contributors.”

Exempt from that relationship were an array of Clinton Foundation subsidiaries, including the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, a Canadian-based charity that works to establish “social enterprises” in the developing world. Telfer is one of three directors of a charity called the Fernwood Foundation, according to Canadian tax records dug up by Schweizer and verified by TIME. Fernwood has donated $2.1 million to the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which at one point passed through as much as 88% of its donations to the main Clinton Foundation, Schweizer writes. Schweizer alleges that Telfer had 1.6 million shares in Uranium One and profited hugely off the deal, a claim that couldn’t be independently verified.

The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership is listed as having given contributed more than $25 million to the foundation according to its online disclosures, but the foundation does not list any of the Giustra Partnership’s individual donors. When contacted by TIME, a spokesman for the Clinton Foundation deferred comment to the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Without a full account of donors to the foundations, allegations like the one in Schweizer’s book will follow Clinton’s candidacy even as she seeks to remain above the fray. The campaign, for its part, will continue to do its best to discredit Schweizer’s book and distance itself from Republican attacks.

“While Republicans focus their efforts on attacks, Hillary Clinton is going to continue to focus on how to help everyday Americans get ahead and stay ahead,” the Clinton campaign said in a memo circulated Tuesday night. “That’s what her campaign is about, and no book — especially one as discredited as this one — is going to change that.”

The Relentless Tennessee Dealmaker

Demanding a role for Congress, former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker is now a key player in the Iran talks

The Mountain View Inn in Cleveland, Tenn., with its stucco ceilings, track lighting and plastic orchids, is a long way from the $1,500-a-night suites at the Beau-Rivage Palace Hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, where U.S. and Iranian diplomats struck a provisional nuclear deal on April 2. But five days after that deal was announced, Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, found himself engaging in a debate in the motel’s restaurant that could, in its own way, determine the shape of the Middle East.

The 40-odd attendees at the Bradley County Republican Party meet-and-greet that rainy April morning were mostly older, well-informed business people, with a few local politicians and retirees mixed in, and their questions were …

The 5 Keys to a Final Nuclear Deal With Iran

The details of the agreement are only part of it. Here's what else matters.

+ READ ARTICLE

The U.S., Iran, the European Union, Russia and China announced that they had “reached solutions on key parameters” to a nuclear deal April 2 after more than a week of tough negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Speaking at the White House, President Obama called the deal “historic” but also said that it was only a “framework” that depended on a final written agreement being set to paper in coming weeks.

In principle, the deal traded limits on the Iranian nuclear program and broad but unspecified international inspections in exchange for the lifting of U.S. and E.U. sanctions and conditional removal of United Nations sanctions. Obama said that until the written agreement was signed, “our work is not yet done” and that if Iran backslid, “there will be no deal.”

Five things will determine whether the U.S. and Iran can ultimately reach a signed, sealed agreement.

What the deal says. Iranian acceptance of intrusive international monitoring of its nuclear program, and the ability of the U.S. and others to reimpose penalties if Iran cheats on a deal are the most important parts of any agreement for the Obama administration. The April 2 statement includes some specifics of the inspections, but leaves others open. Iran has apparently agreed to inspections of all parts of the Iranian nuclear program from mining and milling uranium to suspected nuclear weapons research facilities, and is “required to grant access” to suspicious sites. But the details of that access, its frequency and any limits Iran might try to impose are unclear. If the inspectors, or Western spies, turn up evidence of cheating, the U.S. wants to be able to reimpose the tough economic sanctions that forced Iran to the negotiating table without engaging in lengthy diplomatic wrangling at the U.N. The April 2 agreement speaks of removing some UN sanctions, maintaining others and says a “dispute resolution process” will be put in place.

How Obama handles Congress. The March 31 deadline that drove the current round of talks was actually just a way for the administration to get the U.S. Congress off its back. The real deadline is the June 30 expiration of the Nov. 2013 interim agreement which froze Iran’s nuclear program in return for freezing Western sanctions. Many in Congress believe, rightly, that tough U.S. sanctions helped force Iran to sign that interim agreement to begin with, and now Republicans and some Democrats want a say in whether those sanctions get lifted. Some want to take action to force Iran to agree to concessions in writing. Congressional action could backfire and undermine the April 2 statement before a final deal is written down and signed. The administration is negotiating the terms of any Congressional action, and the outcome of those discussions is unclear.

How Obama handles the international coalition. The greatest downside to the recent talks in Lausanne, from the U.S. perspective, was the appearance of fractures in the international sanctions coalition. Russia and China’s agreement to squeeze Iran through U.N. sanctions was another key to Iranian concessions over the last few years. At one point in the lengthy talks in Switzerland, Russia seemed to side with Iran over whether a deal had been agreed even as the U.S. and France said one hadn’t, raising the danger of a split. If Iran can divide the U.S. and the E.U. from Russia before signing a final deal June 30, it could escape sanctions without having to follow through on the April 2 concessions it provisionally agreed to.

What happens in Iran and Saudi Arabia’s proxy war. Our magazine story this week details the region-wide proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran that is the urgent regional context for the nuclear issue. The Obama Administration is struggling to reassure allies in the Middle East that a deal with Iran doesn’t mean Washington is looking to help Iran’s ascendancy in the new, post-Arab Spring Middle East order. In his White House statement April 2, Obama said he would convene a conference with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab powers this spring as part of that effort. But the worsening violence in Yemen, Syria and Iraq, where Iranian and Saudi proxies are battling it out, could have an unexpected effect on the effort to reach a final written agreement.

How long everyone talks. If the U.S. and Iran can’t get a final written deal by June 30, an ultimate agreement would depend on whether the two sides agree to keep talking, and writing, anyway. Some administration officials have argued it would be better to keep the talks going than to see a complete collapse. Under the terms of the Nov. 2013 temporary agreement, Iran’s program is frozen and the sanctions are in place. But keeping Congress onside, the sanctions coalition together and the Iranians at the table may be impossible after the next deadline.